Samsung M80H vs Philips OLED811

The M80H is not one of the brightest TVs. Its peak brightness is around 350 nits and we saw similar results in most of our test scenes. That's not enough to produce genuinely impressive HDR — bright highlights lack punch and the overall image is a bit too dark. In practice, HDR on the M80H resembles a well-presented SDR image more than clearly more dynamic wide-range content. The picture can still look fine, but it's hard to point to strong specular highlights, clearly bright light sources, or an effect that immediately separates HDR from ordinary content.

Colors

One of the M80H's strengths is its color. The TV uses a PFS-based backlight filter, which allows it to display a significantly wider color gamut than a standard LCD screen without filters. Our measurements confirm this — the M80H covers about 96% of the DCI-P3 gamut and 72% of BT.2020. Those are very good results, which let the colors appear strongly saturated. Samsung's policy here is interesting. The M80H is not part of the QLED family, even though in terms of color it is practically on par with models carrying that label. From an image-quality standpoint, that doesn't matter much; the colors are simply good.

Philips OLED811 uses the new generation WOLED EX panels, also found in models like the LG C6 and Samsung S90H. After calibration we measured around 1500 nits, which is a very good result for an OLED TV. You can see it clearly in movies and series. All kinds of light flashes have the right intensity, especially when they appear on a dark background. In such scenes the OLED811 can deliver truly impressive HDR. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll see that peak brightness in every shot. When the screen is filled with a large area of white or a big explosion, brightness falls to around 600 nits. That's still a good result, but those scenes no longer have the same punch as small, bright elements on a dark background. This is a known limitation of OLEDs, and the OLED811 is no exception.

Colors

Aside from HDR brightness, colors also matter, and Philips performs very well here too. It covers almost the entire DCI-P3 gamut, which contains most of the colors used in HDR movies and series. So you get rich reds and lush greens, and while watching it's hard to find major faults in this area. It looks a bit worse with the much wider BT.2020 gamut — its most saturated shades are already beyond the reach of this panel. Added to that is the issue of the white subpixel the WOLED panel uses to help boost brightness. With very bright colors you can see some "whitening": the color is bright but loses some of its saturation. In exactly these situations QD-OLED panels from Samsung Display have the advantage. In most movies and series, however, this won't be something that immediately stands out.

Filmmaker mode is reasonably well set up out of the box, though it falls short of perfect. In SDR material the most noticeable issue is an excess of red in the white balance, which makes the image look a bit warmer than it should. HDR content shows a similar character. As for the brightness response, in SDR the gamma stays close to the target for most of the range. Small deviations are mainly visible in darker areas, which in places are a little too dim. In HDR the very darkest details are slightly lifted, while from around 65% brightness the image begins to be gently darkened. This is largely due to the way the TV controls its brightness. Overall, Filmmaker mode looks good straight out of the box, but the image can still be improved.

The movie mode on the Philips OLED811 is sensibly configured right out of the box. Most color errors are minor, both in SDR and HDR, so you can sit down and watch without first adjusting the settings. There are no major inaccuracies that would immediately pull attention away from the film.

It's not perfect, though. The white balance shows a slight deficiency of red compared with green, so whites and grays can have a faint greenish tint. It's not a strong cast, but measurements clearly show it. There are also small brightness deviations in SDR: some areas of the picture are slightly lifted, and the deepest blacks aren't always rendered evenly. In HDR the TV tracks the reference much more closely, although in places it slightly pulls details out of the shadows. These are generally things to refine. The factory movie mode provides a good starting point, and calibration will show how much more you can get out of it.

After calibration, the M80H performs really well, especially with basic SDR content. Regular broadcast TV, YouTube, or movies viewed without HDR can look very accurate on it. After correcting the white balance, errors are minor, though you can still sometimes see that the TV tends to oversaturate the most saturated reds. In HDR you can also improve the picture and correct its main faults, but it doesn't reach the level of pricier models. Samsung quite heavily restricts color adjustment options in HDR, so in many areas we have to accept what the TV offers out of the box. Calibration lets us improve some parameters, but we are no longer able to change the overall image character of the M80H.

After calibration the Philips OLED811 produces an image very close to the reference. We managed to even out the white balance and remove the subtle color cast visible in the factory settings. Errors in Color Checker measurements for SDR and HDR dropped to around 1 to 2, and many samples even fall below 1. That's a level at which it's hard to spot differences from the reference image with the naked eye. We also improved the gamma, and only in the brightest whites a slight brightening remains. In HDR the EOTF curve also stays close to the reference, although the TV still tends to slightly boost the brightness of small elements like stars or subtitles. That gives the image a bit of extra glow that shouldn't be there, but otherwise there's little to complain about. It was already good out of the box, and after calibration we managed to refine most of the remaining shortcomings.

Although the M80H is positioned fairly low in Samsung's lineup, the manufacturer equipped it with one of its stronger processors, NQ4 AI Gen2. The same chip can be found in Neo QLED TVs and the lower-tier OLED S85H. That's good news, because the processor does a very good job improving weaker source material. Upscaling performs best. Low-resolution content is displayed properly, and edges don't look overly jagged. Of course the TV won't create details that aren't in the source, but regular broadcast TV and older recordings look decent on it. One drawback is overscan, that is, edge cropping, which cannot be fully disabled. The tonal transition smoothing feature, the so-called noise reduction, also works well. The processor can effectively reduce visible signs of heavy compression, but it does so not without side effects. At higher settings it can overly smooth the image, remove some fine detail, and even eliminate film grain. Therefore we recommend using this feature primarily for content that actually has problems with heavy compression and posterization.

The OLED811 handles lower-quality content reasonably well, though it's far from perfect. The "Artifact Reduction" feature helps smooth tonal transitions and on the low setting delivers a pretty good result. It doesn't remove banding between shades as effectively as similar solutions from some competitors, but at least it doesn't introduce new artifacts. That's a sensible setting for everyday viewing. Still, there's some disappointment, because the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chip used here can, in other manufacturers' implementations, deal more effectively with heavy compression even at similarly low settings. A lot therefore depends on how each manufacturer uses its capabilities. We have a few more reservations about the 4K upscaling itself. There is plenty of detail, but the overall image looks fairly soft. Edges are heavily smoothed, which robs the picture of some sharpness and clarity. You can partly correct that with the sharpness slider in the menu, though that will just emphasize outlines rather than recover detail. On the plus side, there is no overscan, so even with an SD signal the TV does not crop the edges of the picture.

The M80H performs very well for watching sports and gaming. The TV is equipped with a panel with a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz at 4K, and when the resolution is lowered to Full HD it can handle up to 240 Hz. PC gamers will benefit most from the latter option.

The panel also handles 120 Hz content well, which matters especially for console gaming. The high refresh rate is useful for watching sports too, and motion blur is relatively low. That’s important because VA panels are not known for the best results in this respect. With the M80H, fast-moving objects do not produce a very noticeable trail.

In terms of motion handling, the OLED811 performs excellently. At 120 Hz, which is useful for console gaming and watching sports, the image stays clear and moving objects don’t leave noticeable trails. The fast response of OLED pixels helps here; you can see it clearly in the UFO test, even on dark backgrounds. There are also motion-smoothing controls. For movies you can adjust the strength of smoothing to your taste, ranging from preserving a cinematic feel to much smoother motion. A separate motion blur reduction control is useful for fast-paced content like live sports broadcasts.

The M80H can be a very good choice for gamers on a slightly smaller budget. Feature-wise it offers essentially the same as Samsung's much more expensive TVs. All three HDMI inputs support HDMI 2.1, so even if one is taken by a soundbar connected via eARC there’s still room for a PC and consoles. There’s also VRR up to 144 Hz at 4K and up to 240 Hz in Full HD. Samsung has properly implemented HGiG as well, so after performing HDR calibration on the console, games are appropriately matched to the screen’s capabilities. That won’t make the M80H any brighter, but at least it won’t unnecessarily wash out the brightest parts of the image. There’s also a Game Bar for quick access to the most important settings and a Gaming Hub that lets you play in the cloud without a console. The M80H also includes Game Motion Plus, which creates extra frames and improves the smoothness of games running at 30 or 60 fps. Input lag then rises to about 59 ms, but it’s still roughly three times lower than with the typical motion smoothing on other manufacturers’ TVs. We don’t really recommend it for online multiplayer, but in more relaxed titles it can work very well.

OLED811 has almost everything you could expect from a gaming TV. It supports 120 Hz at Full HD, 1440p and 4K resolutions, and when connected to a PC can reach 165 Hz. It also has VRR, which helps avoid screen tearing with variable frame rates, and ALLM, which automatically switches to game mode. So you don't have to dig into the settings every time you power up your console.

HGiG also works correctly, so once you enable HDR on the console the TV doesn't apply its own brightness adjustments. There's also a Game Bar that lets you check signal parameters and quickly change settings useful while gaming. The list even includes Dolby Vision for games, but there's a significant catch, which you'll read about below.